I think that one good thing that happened to me was that I was in a one room school house for 4th and 5th grade. My mother and I figured out “New Math” together. I loved it and was on the advanced track for math after that.
One thing I wonder about is how many girls show up as precocious in math? When my kid was around four he knew fractions and insisted on being the banker in Monopoly. He looked at a clock and observed that 5x12=60. When he was in first grade he did math with the third graders.
Interestingly my second kid was the one who could never do math minutes, but when tested for possible LDs in 5th grade some of his highest scores were in the mathematical reasoning sections of the IQ test. He usually got B’s in math because he could never remember shortcuts remained a bit iffy with his number facts, but his pre-calc teacher loved him and he got through Calc BC with a reasonable grade.
I worked on the elementary school year book and year after year kids said math was their favorite subject. The school did a lot of stuff to make math more friendly, in particular running Family Math workshops every year which were a lot of fun. The middle school while my kids were there, were steering a lot more kids (including girls) into Algebra in 8th grade which they had not previously. The high school emphasized at every PTA meeting that math was important to many professions and that one should not burn bridges by quitting math. Never the less the two year advanced group (taking Linear Algebra as seniors) only had one girl the year my oldest was in it.
Interesting discussion. My older D was convinced that she wasn’t a math person because of poor math instruction in ES. Upon arriving in middle school, she tested into advanced math track and had a wonderful female teacher whose main goal was to have her students enjoy math and feel comfortable with it. By 8th grade, D won the Math Olympiad and went on to be a math tutor. D2 just participated in a week-long STEM camp for rising 8th grade girls sponsored by the AAUW. The organizers clearly believed that girls start to drop off from math and science at age 12-13. D2 loved doing high level math, science, coding, etc. in an all female environment.
There are still some school systems that do not encourage girls in mathematics. The local elementary schools had an Individualized Math Program, for a small number of students (typically 1 or 2 students per grade, in each school). When QMP was offered the opportunity for the program, I was told that she was the “first girl” in the school system to be invited to participate. This was not so long ago–at any rate, it was surprisingly recent for her to be the first girl. I attribute this in part to an systems problem. They had occasional testing for this program, and students had the opportunity to answer “don’t know,” to questions. Call it a stereotype, but I am convinced that more girls than boys opted for “don’t know” when they had an idea about the answer, but weren’t certain.
In middle school, the most accelerated math class was largely boys, with about 6 girls. They boys were very crude, as a group. One made a personally directed rape “joke,” before the teacher came to the classroom. The girls started staying in the teacher’s office, until the teacher entered the classroom. I know that middle-school teachers have many issues to handle, but if I were the teacher, and saw the girls huddling in my office every time I showed up to the classroom, I would have asked someone what was going on, sooner or later.
It is not that QMP was unable to stand up for herself or others. In middle school, when a boy who hung out with her group of girls was being teased daily for being gay, she was the leader of the group telling the older middle school boys to stop. They didn’t stop. The girls finally spoke to the Assistant Principal, who arranged to have a teacher on hand to witness the situation. The teasing was witnessed. Then it stopped.
When QMP had the opportunity to hyper-accelerate in math, which meant that she could get away from the most problematic middle school boys, she took it. This worked out all right, but not ideally. It is an example of choosing the better of the available options, not necessarily the best course.
In 8th grade, QMP had the top score of the regional hyper-accelerated group in a state-wide high-school math competition. During freshman year, she was taking Calc BC. No one at the high school mentioned the competition to her for that year. We got her enrolled for it, and notified the teacher who was monitoring the testing room, but he forgot that she was coming, and had no desk for her. Then she wound up being marked as having an unexcused absence from other classes that met during the test, because he also forgot to include her name on the list of students taking the test. We got that ironed out, but it was annoying.
In her junior year, she wanted to be on the math team from the high school. In the meantime, she had taken honors multi-variable calculus and honors differential equations at the local university, and she was enrolled for that year in linear algebra and a probability & statistics course that required multi-variable calculus. The advisor for the math team told her that she had to be taking math to be eligible for math team! She did get onto the math team, and went for the competition at another university in the state (on a school day). In addition to the team events, her individual event was a prepared speech on a choice of one of two math topics announced by the university. An older boy on the team wrote a speech for her, and gave it to her (Here, let me boy-splain that to you). She didn’t use his speech, gave a totally different talk, and placed first in her group.
This story would not be complete without mentioning that the math team advisor neglected to give the names of the students on the math team to the office, so they were marked as having unexcused absences. I was getting pretty annoyed, so I took the program listing her participation, her certificate handed out at the end of the program, and her gold medal to the office. However, that was not enough for them to credit her with an excused absence–the math team advisor had to notify them . . . which eventually happened; but in the meantime, there was a physics test that she was supposed to make up.
As the saying goes, once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is enemy action. I can’t compare these situations directly with the situations that the boys encountered. While they weren’t exactly “discouraging,” they fell very far short of the actual encouragement that I had from my high school teachers (and earlier).
While I agree that “more detailed” girls sound stereotype-ish and the concept definitely falls apart once you start looking at each individual, that’s just what I observed in both my kids classes, their friends’ classes AND the same was true when I was a kid.
Girls tended to be better with neatness, accuracy and memorization (not me, though - I was the sloppy one ) and for the first few years, when math didn’t require any thinking, were ahead of boys (in grades). Once problems and concepts became more analytical, boys started to shine more and those neat girls were falling behind (or just not progressing as much).
Of course, again, this is not about any particular kid abilities nor is it a full-blown statistical analysis - only a personal observation of classes of kids in different schools, different times and even different countries.
There is other evidence, however, that teachers tend to perceive girls as better students and boys as more troublesome in ES. The paper linked to above says they did something similar on reading, but I was not able to find it. I did find this, however, that in some ways contradicts. (the female author on this is also the second author on the linked study).
The linked paper discusses the above:
It appears that the gap is most apparent after controlling for behavior. That is, the comparison is between boys that are on the well-behaved side compared to more typical girls (at least the way I read it). Maybe the teachers are influenced by the boys relatively better behavior in rating them as better math students?
The paper also notes that the gender gap is largest at the highest end of math achievement scale. That gap persists into things like PISA tests and SATs. Is this due to expectations of parents and educators, or is there something inherently different between the male and female brain that means that math is actually of more interest to and easier for boys in a general way.
It is not clear how large this “gap” actually is. Does it explain why boys tend to “like” math more and achieve more?
In our HS, the girls are the top performers except for a small cohort of the tippy top boys. However, more boys than girls choose to go into engineering or other math-intensive majors.
Socalmom: Did they also use any testing? Our school combines grades with the Iowa test of algebra readiness (or something like that). Kids had to have both top grades and above a certain percentile. Otherwise, that seems might unfair. Do lots of kids have straight As in the 7th grade math? Perhaps there are too many for the more advanced 8th grade math.
It’s empirical data, and it’s also tainted by your own confirmation bias. So, basically, worthless in terms of factual information as to how women really are.
My Ds experience was very similar to QMs. She completed BC in 7th grade and Linear Algebra in 9th. For fun she decided to join the math team. They kept forgetting to email her about events and when they would finally put her on a team they put her on the lowest ranking team. Needless to say she quit as it was a complete waste of time
@mom2and I’m not positive, but I don’t think so? I know my daughter always tested in the advanced range on STAR tests. When we asked why she wasn’t placed in Algebra A/B we were simply told they were slowing down the math track across the board and there would be very few kids in the A/B class. How those choices were made I cannot say, it seemed like the teachers picked among their A students, but I can’t quantify how one A student ended up accelerated and another not.
That’s really troubling, collegedad13! Your daughter was even more accelerated than mine! Those experiences seem so odd to me, because of the contrast with my own high school experiences. My teachers actively encouraged my interest in science and math, and actually sought me out to let me know about various opportunities. They nominated me for things I had never heard of. In one case, one of the teachers invited a college professor to speak to a high school club and introduced me to him, which led to my enrolling in his college class for the next quarter (which was rare in those days). I am really grateful to them.
It is hard to know what has caused the difference in approach, that exists in some places now. I am glad to hear about the places where girls–really, all students–have their interests in science and math encouraged.
@MotherOfDragons , I don’t think my data is useless. I believe it’s as “useless” as any story of S or D told here - it’s an open discussion, right? Besides, I was thinking of this in terms of “how the schools and teachers influence the kids success in math” rather than “what each gender is capable of” (which is nonsense in any case).
I think (and many posts support this view) that a particular teacher or a program and environment have much stronger influence on the outcome than the gender of the kid.
In our case teachers/school program was better catered for girls in elementary school and then it was suddenly becoming more “boy-centered”. This was true for all my kids’ friends. It was easier to maintain good grades for my D in the first 6 years of school than for my S. I volunteered in the classes for them - there were 1 or 2 sloppy girls per class and 1 or 2 meticulous boys per class. Teachers were generally happier to see nicely done work and didn’t like any out-of-place ideas or imaginative but sloppily-done work. This discouraged the majority of the boys and some girls, too. Most (but not all!) of the kids were dead-bored with the work which was well below their level thus leading to more inattention and sloppiness, especially boys. Girls took some pleasure in just prettily done things, so the boring work didn’t upset them as much.
There’s been research done on this. Female teachers are just as prone to gender discrimination in math as male teachers are.
Early experiences are formative and have a disproportionate impact on later education, but most research shows that discouragement of girls in math and science only starts in elementary school and continues through high school, college, and graduate work.
The discouragement is usually unconscious and very subtle. It’s the kind of thing that few women would actually be able to consciously highlight as adults (although I have heard some egregious stories). It’s more the kind of thing where - if there’s a math opportunity like an enrichment program, teachers are more likely to recommend boys; or boys’ extreme scores are more likely to be recognized than girls; or teachers are more likely to call on boys in math classes than girls; or boys’ prowess in math is more likely to be recognized as an innate quality or talent than girls. (All of this is supported by prior research.) You might not even notice that these things are going on at all.
Sure. Although there’s no reason to believe that with equal opportunities and encouragement that girls wouldn’t lust for math and its applications just as much as boys. I was always pretty neutral towards math in school - I was good at it, but had no great love - until 12th grade, when I really started to love math after I realized the applications it had due to a truly excellent 12th grade math teacher. The abstract math didn’t work well for me; my calculus teacher opened up a new world when he started giving us engineering and physics problems to solve with math. When I taught statistics at the college level I tried to inject the same really applied focus to my teaching.
That’s not “natural”, though, suggesting any innate inclination towards that. Women and girls are rewarded for neatness and preciseness starting from a young age. Boys and men are rewarded for analytical, creative thinking. (There is research to support this, too.) Girls are also punished more severely for “bad” behavior, inattention or hyperactivity, whereas rambunctious boys are handwaved with “boys will be boys.” (Research on this as well.)
No, there isn’t.
I think the point is that individual anecdotes (yours or anyone else’s) are not useful to confirm or contradict research studies. Number one is the N of 1 issue, but number two - as was pointed out - our observations are tainted by all sorts of biases and by recall. Humans actually have relatively terrible memories - even factual memories are colored by events that happen between the time that the original event happened and the recall. Evaluative memories are even more tainted by everything that you read and think about from now until then.
It’s not that individual stories aren’t useful - they are. A lot of research is qualitative research, where researchers do interviews and dig into themes in people’s stories. But researchers will interview lots of people and try to look for patterns and recurring themes amongst people. Without sharing multiple efforts, it’s hard to say whether one person’s experience is an outlier or the norm.
I definitely experienced this - I never thought or was told I was good at math, although I got a 750 on the math SAT in the 1970s - but, 40 years later, my daughter has been lucky to get a lot of encouragement, even though she is at first glance an “artsy” person. However, I’m guessing that in a lot of places, pervasive cultural attitudes about girls and math haven’t changed much since the '70s.
) and for the first few years, when math didn’t require any thinking, were ahead of boys (in grades). Once problems and concepts became more analytical, boys started to shine more and those neat girls were falling behind (or just not progressing as much).